Transcript ABC 666 Ross Solly with Deborah Morris MLA (Brindabella)

8 September 2026

ABC 666 Ross Solly Breakfast 8 Sept 2026

Interview with Deborah Morris MLA (Brindabella)

Solly: Well, Deb Morris is, of course, the Deputy Opposition Leader, but also a Member for Brindabella. Deb Morris, good morning to you.

Morris: Good morning, Ross.

Solly: So just a clarification first up. Did your party ever support the proposed ice rink? Did you think it was a goer?

Morris: Yeah, look, I’m not sure where Taimus has come up with that, and it sounds like an attempt by him and the Labor Party to throw out a distraction for their own failure to deliver on their three-time running election commitment. In fact, just last year, I, along with my colleague, who’s the Shadow Minister for Sport and Recreation, moved a motion in the Assembly to hold the government to account for this commitment that they’ve made. And it was only as a result of that motion that the government handed over the contract to the developer. So, yeah, a bit odd, those statements from the Labor Member for Brindabella.

Solly: You’re not surprised, are you, that this has fallen over? I mean, it’s been an open secret around the ACT for a long, long time, and certainly the proponents had made it pretty clear that they were not enamoured with the site. They didn’t really want, Deb Morris, to build it down there.

Morris: Yeah, this is just beyond disappointing for so many members of the community and it’s just the sad, the sad reality about it is how many people in Tuggeranong aren’t surprised because this is just how they have been treated by the government for a very long time. They’ve treated Tuggeranong like an afterthought and when they have taken this commitment to the community at three separate elections and have now just ripped the blanket up from underneath them, the disappointment is palpable.

Solly: But, and I put this to Laura Nuttall, your fellow Member for Brindabella, at the Greens, earlier this morning: it was only a couple of weeks ago that the Assembly got stuck into the government for making poor financial decisions. Chris Steel says that they’ve crunched the numbers on this, they’ve looked at a couple of other factors, and it represented a poor return for rate payers. Now, I mean, you can’t have it both ways, can you, Deb Morris? You can’t, on the one hand, say you’ve got to manage your money responsibly and stop investing in things that are a waste of time and effort, but then on the next, criticise them for actually walking away from a project that they’ve identified as being financially not up to scratch.

Morris: The Budget is a decision of government and it reflects the choices of government and this Labor government made the decision and the choice in 2016 to commit to an ice rink to Tuggeranong. And that’s a decision that they’ve taken to three elections now. And they have betrayed the people of Tuggeranong and pulled back on that commitment. So they need to, you know, they have to make the decision. Are they going to be a government of integrity that keeps to their word, where they say they’re going to do something, that they’ll get it done? Or whether they’re going to break their faith and commitment to the people of Tuggeranong? And we’ve seen what their answer to that is.

Solly: But if the situation has changed, you know, we had COVID. Obviously, ice sports are much bigger now than they maybe were in 2016. So they need a bigger venue. They need a bigger site. If all of those things have sort of come together to point to the project that they had in mind for Tuggeranong, no longer being fit for purpose, I mean, you’d be a crazy government to continue going down there. Imagine the flak they’d cop in 10 years’ time if they had this white elephant sitting in Tuggeranong.

Morris: Well, we need to look at some of the history here. This commitment was made in 2016, and when they made it, they said that construction would have begun before 2020. So understandably, a decade later, obviously costs have gone up. We’ve had COVID. The environment and situation has changed. But they promised construction would have begun before 2020. So they’re well behind the ball here. And it’s just so disappointing not just for the people of Tuggeranong, but for the ice sports community in general.

Solly: Chris Steel has said … well look, the money that we’re going to spend on the ice facility, we’ll pump that into other sporting facilities and it will be spent in Tuggeranong. So $16.8 million or whatever it is, Deb Morris, it’s going to be spent in Tuggeranong. Now, there’ll be a lot of sporting groups in Tuggeranong listening this morning who’ll be rubbing their hands together and thinking, thank goodness, thank goodness we can finally get that upgrade to our change room or get lights on our... I mean, there’ll be many sporting groups in Tuggeranong who’ll be cheering at this and thinking, you’re beauty.

Morris: Well the issue that the government has now is a credibility one. Can we trust that they’re actually going to do what they say they will do because they have a very long-running record of breaking their word with the people of Canberra and certainly of Tuggeranong? So if they say that that money is going to go to Tuggeranong, we will hold them to that and we will fight tooth and nail to make sure that they commit to their word.

Solly: This text says “Ross, I’m a long-time resident of Tuggeranong and I’m not at all disappointed in the ice rink not going ahead. There are very few people using that facility”. Well, that’s actually not quite ... I don’t think that’s true.